


Don't Call Me "Big Guy," and I Won't Call You "Babe"

by Kara_McKay



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, F/M, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Promiscuity, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Sex, final pairing is m/m
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 17:56:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_McKay/pseuds/Kara_McKay
Summary: Dr. Vanessa Sutton, a HYDRA bio tech scientist with very specific taste in men, becomes more and more disillusioned with her employer and develops her own plan to thwart Insight involving the unwitting participation of HYDRA ops.  When her plan fails,  Brock Rumlow and Jack Rollins are caught up in her escape plan.  Similarities between her outlook, Rumlow's, and Rollins's become apparent as events transpire.





	Don't Call Me "Big Guy," and I Won't Call You "Babe"

**Author's Note:**

> This story includes a cameo appearance by Isaac Murphy, who is Lauralot’s OC. She bases his appearance on Diego Luna. Combining a personality that, on the surface, seems out of place within HYDRA with Luna’s face and build hits me in all the right places. He’s the pretty, cinnamon roll villain Marvel has declined to give us, and Lauralot has my undying gratitude for making up for Marvel’s shortsightedness.

The science team from Baltimore arrived on schedule, and no one outside of biotech paid much attention to it. Two women and six guys, all nondescript in their black, brown, cream, and navy business casual skirts and slacks, took an elevator to the Triskelion’s seventeenth floor, then descended with a larger, slightly more smartly dressed group an hour later. They washed out on the lunchtime tide and didn’t return; you wouldn’t even have had to blink to miss them.

“Did you see Sutton’s crew?” Foster asked, falling into step with Rumlow on his way toward the gym.

“Who?” Rumlow asked.

“Sutton’s people. I don’t remember what they do. Robotics maybe?”

“Should I have noticed ‘em?”

“Naw,” Foster said. He gave Rumlow a quick, indecipherable glance. “You’ll probably see Dr. Sutton, though. I’m surprised you haven’t already. She’s friendly like that.”

“Huh,” Rumlow said, losing interest, and Foster ducked into the locker room. Rumlow didn’t forget about it, but he didn’t think about it, either. He’d gotten his promotion two months previous, and he was starting to feel like he knew what he was doing. Also, the front half of his week had run smooth as silk for a change. He’d even gotten laid a couple nights back after half an hour of not really trying at the bar he favored for mid-week stress relief expeditions. One minute he’d been nursing his second beer and then a petite woman with black or dark brown hair had been next to him. She’d led with, “Hey, big guy,” and from there, a good time had been had by all. Dr. Sutton might be friendly, but Commander Rumlow had more sublime pleasures upon which to reflect.

*************************

It re-occurred to him the following day on his way to HR. He couldn’t make out much about the female lab coat talking to Kline near the elevators, but she looked familiar – small and a little too thin, with thick, dark hair caught up in a messy bun. Several inches of light blue skirt showed beneath the hem of her coat, and Rumlow spared a moment to admire her moderately nice legs. Her brown loafers weren’t doing much for them, but there was appreciable shape to them in spite of those, and Rumlow, who was something of a leg man, thought they’d be worth seeing in heels. His gaze was back at a professional level by the time he drew abreast of her and Kline, but her expression froze for a split second as she glanced up at him. Kline gave him a curious look and Rumlow paused, uncomfortably aware that he was cranking his professional, social smile up a notch in self-defense.

The woman in the lab coat was wearing wire rimmed glasses. She hadn’t been wearing those at the bar on the previous night. Her hair had been down, too.

“Hi!” she said, “Nice seeing you again! I’m Dr. Vanessa Sutton, but everyone just calls me ‘Nessa.” She extended a tiny, rodent-like hand and Rumlow, trapped by the unbreakable laws of social intercourse, took it. “And you’re Brian, right? Brian…” she trailed off, wrinkling her nose in amusement at her memory lapse. Kline, who’d been watching their exchange with unwonted avidity, barked an explosive cough.

“It’s Brock, actually,” Rumlow supplied, giving her hand a careful squeeze before releasing it. “Brock Rumlow. Commander Rumlow.”

“Oh!” she said, nodding. “Of course,” she essayed a self-deprecatory eye roll, as if knowledge of his name and rank were something she could have sucked out of his dick if only she’d been thinking at the time. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you again, Commander Rumlow.”

“Pleased to meet you, too,” he replied. For a moment they stood, baring their teeth at each other.

Kline clapped his hands together. “Well, how ‘bout going for some of that mac ‘n’ cheese, then?” He said a little too heartily. Rumlow could see a manic gleam in his eye that he didn’t like at all. “With ham!”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to take it back up with me,” Sutton said, briefly returning her attention to Kline before giving Rumlow a quick, apologetic smile. “And you and I will have to catch up soon.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, but she was already refocusing on Kline. She hadn’t been rude or abrupt, but Rumlow felt a flash of embarrassment tinged irritation at the dismissal. _Catch up soon._ On what? It wasn’t like he’d been looking for her, or expected anything of her having inadvertently found her. The meaningless and unnecessary verbal reassurance annoyed him. They were not going to _catch up_.

Sutton didn’t look back at him as he strode past her and Kline to the waiting elevator. Rumlow hadn’t forgotten the encounter by the time he returned to his office, but his annoyance had changed in tone. He’d have to avoid her, of course – keep it professional if she engineered another accidental meeting – and ride out whatever gossip he couldn’t shut down. It would be embarrassing for her and tiresome for him, but there it was.

Except for that it wasn’t. Rumlow had almost completely forgotten about the incident by the time he heard her team was scheduled to head back to Maryland over the next weekend.

********************

She was at the bar again, undoubtedly enjoying her last night with new friends before the trip home. If she’d been back since the night he’d gone with her to her hotel room, Rumlow hadn’t been there on those nights, and if any of her colleagues from Maryland were with her now, Rumlow hadn’t seen them. From his favorite corner table, he had a clear view of both the front entrance and the horseshoe bar, and as far as he could tell, Sutton was the only SHIELD employee in the entire establishment who wasn’t a field ops agent of one kind or another.

Alvarez, on the other hand, was STRIKE Beta. He wasn’t tall, but he was the kind of vain bastard who was willing to put in the extra work necessary to add ornamental bulk to functional strength, and who took the time with his appearance to stand out just that little bit from all the other soldiers and operatives of one alphabet soup agency or another. Rumlow knew the type; he was one, himself.

At the bar, Sutton grinned up at Alvarez. She looked relaxed and just a little bit tipsy; her cheeks were flushed, and it seemed to Rumlow that she was laughing a little too easily. The grin she was giving Alvarez wasn’t her polite, we’ll-have-to-catch-up smile, but Rumlow wasn’t quite sure how he’d describe it. It wasn’t the one Montgomery wore when she stepped into the sparring ring, nor was it the expression he remembered seeing on his stepmother’s face when she’d find something she liked at the thrift store, but Rumlow thought it was somewhere along that spectrum. He didn’t much care for that chain of associations, and how they led to Sutton standing too close to Alvarez, who radiated catlike, comfortable satisfaction.

“The word was that you knew Sutton, but that gossip died down pretty quick,” Blackwell said. He was a pale complected man with dark red hair and heavy, sensual features – a roué’s face that became florid with drink and would look most natural over a hand of cards in a smoky room. He’d followed Rumlow’s gaze to where Sutton was now leaning forward against Alvarez, her head tilted almost entirely back so that her lips nearly touched his carefully manicured, jet black beard. It was a playful, self-consciously entreating pose, and Alvarez smiled confidently down at her in cooperative appreciation. He held a beer in one hand while his other rode just above her hip; meanwhile, Sutton’s little paws rested lightly on his abs. Blackwell, who’d come in with Rumlow and seated himself across from him, looked away from them and gave Rumlow a knowing smirk.

“Yeah,” Rumlow said, his troubled gaze remaining on the pair. “We met, but it was, uh, informal.”

“Informal,” Blackwell repeated. The corners of his eyes crinkled, deepening his usual air of cynical amusement. He looked back at Rumlow and snickered. “I bet it was informal.”

Rumlow gave him a sour look. “She gets around, huh?”

“Dr. Sutton is fond of STRIKE.” Blackwell said. “STRIKE is fond of her.”

“That’s fucked up,” Rumlow opined, then frowned. His attention shifted back to Blackwell. “Is it really that specific? STRIKE?”

Blackwell guffawed. “Well, okay, maybe we’re a little thin on the ground to keep a girl properly busy,” he said, then leaned in and lowered his voice. “HYDRA, okay? She sticks to HYDRA field ops.” His face split in a grin. “But STRIKE’s easy, so… there y’go.”

“Yeah, that really is fucked up,” Rumlow repeated. “I mean, okay, she’s keeping her loyalties straight, but still—”

Blackwell hummed, giving him a look of false commiseration. “She didn’t come back for seconds, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Rumlow shot back, amused and irritated, but not ready to be angry. “Maybe I made myself scarce.”

Blackwell gave him a skeptical look, but then his expression cleared. “Oh, I see,” he said, his tone arch. You didn’t know.”

“What’s there to know?” On the far end of the room, the door swung open, admitting Rollins and Turner. For a moment, Rumlow saw them as an outsider might – two tall men, solid and imposing, striding toward the bar with the matter-of-fact expectation of men accustomed to others moving out of their way. Sutton and Alvarez’s dyad opened at their approach, and the four of them formed a new and striking tableau. Sutton settled between Alvarez and Rollins with her back to the bar and her pale, narrow face angled up towards Rollins’s. She didn’t look sexy or flirty, but relaxed – amused, maybe, by something Turner was saying as he took his beer from the bartender. Rollins said something and gave her one of his rare, open smiles that could look either endearingly goofy or psychopathic depending on circumstances, and both she and Alvarez laughed. She wasn’t on the outside in the way girlfriends and hookups tended to be in these situations, but she wasn’t on the inside, either. The scene made Rumlow think of a Venn diagram in a weird sort of way – not one group with an accessory or satellite, but two groups temporarily overlapping.

“Not much, I guess,” Blackwell said abruptly. “It’s just…” he paused, frowning over his words. “It’s not personal with her. She’s just blowing off steam like everyone else.”

“Huh,” Rumlow said, but Blackwell wasn’t really paying attention to him anymore, or to Sutton for that matter. He was watching Rollins, and Rumlow felt a surge of aggravation at the flat, speculative look on Blackwell’s face. _This, right here_, he thought, _is the problem with Sutton_.

“Seeya later, big guy,” he heard Sutton say to either Turner or Rollins, her voice cutting through a momentary lull in the surrounding noise. Rumlow stiffened, grimacing at the generic epithet, but Alvarez didn’t seem to mind it. He guided Sutton toward the door while Rumlow watched, and then Turner caught sight of Rumlow and Blackwell. The darkly curious look on Blackwell’s face had vanished as if it had never been there. Rumlow sighed inwardly and waved to Turner. “Over here,” he hollered over the ambient noise, and let any lingering thoughts about Sutton go.

********************

He couldn’t let it go completely, though, and not so much because of her, but because of that look he’d seen on Blackwell’s face. Rumlow knew that look. It was the look a man wore while debating whether he could take his ex’s new boyfriend in a fight, and it sure as hell wasn’t a look Rumlow ever wanted to see one of his men giving any other man under his command. That was the kind of shit that got people killed.

“It’s not like that, boss,” Murphy said, and if anything in all his time in SHIELD and then HYDRA had ever truly shocked his sensibilities, it was learning that Murphy had apparently taken his turn on the HYDRA field ops bike. “Dr. Sutton isn’t anyone’s girlfriend.”

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Rumlow said, not looking up from his computer screen. Murphy, who’d dropped by with some bullshit paperwork from HR, leaned against Rollins’s currently vacant desk. He had a runner’s build rather than a lifter’s, giving him a deceptively slight appearance beside his heavier teammates. Rumlow, who stood at the exact same height as Murphy, thought that perception had more to do with Murphy’s carriage than with his actual size; he tended to wend and accommodate where others would broaden and stride. Midday sunlight shone through the open blinds, cutting across his smooth, warm ivory skin and turning his soft black hair to a rich, auburn lit brown. It was a mess, as usual – not slicked back or cut short, but soft, loose and just barely within regulations. Only the care with which he maintained his mustache and the scruff along his jaw belied his apparent indifference to appearance, and Rumlow thought that was fairly representative of Murphy, who was always _almost_ or _not quite_ in all the right ways to fit _just so_, and whose genuine, significant effort always seemed unconscious or accidental.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Murphy continued. He’d settled into the relaxed, easy posture that came naturally to him when something caught enough of his attention to distract him from self consciousness, but he had that serious look on his boyishly handsome face that Rumlow had grown to dread. “Are you planning to marry each woman you hook up with?”

Rumlow looked up and gave him an unimpressed stare. Murphy looked back at him and nodded as if Rumlow had expressed wholehearted understanding of his point.

“No, of course you aren’t.” Murphy waited, then carried on. “So there’s no reason to expect Dr. Sutton to want exclusivity. Unless y—” he paused, reconsidering, “unless a guy actually wanted her to be disappointed. Right?”

“Murphy,” Rumlow began.

“And why would someone want her to feel bad? Over more or less casual sex? Why be that way when it’s more of a...” Murphy waved his hand, looking for the right words, “when it’s a her and us thing, not a her and any one of us thing.” He frowned, still uncertain, but his expression shifted back into earnestness as he warmed to his idea. “Why make drama where there isn’t any? You wouldn’t want that.”

“Right,” Rumlow said.. “But you gotta admit there are plenty of guys who would.” It was true. Among them were Eric Morgan and Todd Davis, whose names and records Rumlow had dredged up from personnel files. Neither of them were still in SHIELD’s employ after separate investigations into inappropriate conduct involving Sutton.The thing with Morgan had deteriorated into petty harassment and police calls, but Sutton’s issues with him had come to a swift resolution. He’d died in a rock-climbing accident a month after she filed a restraining order against him.

“Well, yeah.” Murphy frowned. “But what does that have to do with it?”

Murphy sounded genuinely confused. Rumlow sighed. “C’mon, Murphy, it’s not what decent guys want that’s relevant.”

“If it’s not, then I’d say we have a real problem,” Murphy said. “If guys who are assholes get to determine what women can do…” he trailed off, looking at Rumlow expectantly. Hopefully.

Rumlow nodded in defeat. “Yeah, I get what you’re saying.”

And he did, in theory. He could even go along with it, in terms of the wider world and general principles. But in terms of STRIKE, and the way in which his men interacted with each other and worked in the field… well, that was another story.

“Just, look at it this way,” Rumlow tried again. “Never mind her. Do you want one of the assholes standing behind you with a gun?”

Something flickered in Murphy’s dark eyes. Rumlow thought he saw incredulous uncertainty in that flicker, and maybe a glimmer of contempt. “I can think of a few reasons why that might be a concern for me, but it’s not something I dwell on.” Murphy paused. When he spoke again, his tone was carefully respectful. “And in general, how far do you think a person should bend to keep that sort of person satisfied? Is it your experience that bending works?”

Rumlow took a deep breath. He hadn’t meant to end up arguing with Murphy, who was now frowning ambivalent concern into the middle distance.between them. And, he had to admit that Murphy had a point, too. Start out trying to keep your head low enough to suit that sort of guy, and you’d just end up with his boot on your neck. Rumlow had seen it over and over again.

“No,” he answered. “I hear what you’re saying. But we’re also doing an important and dangerous job, and we’re not less important than some hotshot scientist who gets to go back to the lab if things gets a little too hot to handle.” _Or file some paperwork at the courthouse, or get someone to give someone else a shove instead of a hand up_. “Think about it. Why the fuck do you think we have rules against fraternization?”

“Yeah, okay,” Murphy said slowly. His voice was even, but Rumlow realized with something like wonder that he’d managed to upset him. Murphy was being careful because he wasn’t yet sure where he stood on the team or with the new boss, but Rumlow thought that if Murphy were talking to someone else, somewhere else, he’d have a lot more to say on this subject. “No matter how you frame it,” Murphy finally said, “it always comes back to saying that whatever women do is less important, that they need to adapt their behavior so we don’t have to adapt ours, and that if there’s going to be any change, it has to start somewhere else and only go so far.”

“Alright, fine,” Rumlow said, returning his attention to the screen. “I just have to deal with the way things are, not the way they ought to be.”

It was a shitty way of ending a discussion, and Rumlow hated it. It felt weak, and that feeling of weakness irritated him. Murphy dropped his papers on Rollins’s desk and inadvertently toppled a rigorously even and squared stack of requisition forms in the process. Rumlow let the silence spin out while Murphy fussed ineffectually with the scattered forms, edging farther into Rollins’s tightly controlled deskscape before finally taking pity on him. “Leave it,” he said, not looking up. “Before you fuckin’ dump the organizer or break his coffee mug.” _W__eak_, he thought disgustedly, sounding peevish and snippy to his own ears. He didn’t look up as Murphy hovered awkwardly, unsure as to whether to wait for a formal dismissal, before shuffling out.

********************

Rollins’s imposing stature was as much a product of silent presence as it was of his four inches over the average American male’s height, but naked and in repose, it was his length rather than his height that always impressed itself upon Rumlow. He had lean bulk, but not the sort that’s consciously built with an eye toward this or that outcome. Rollins approached the gym meditatively, adding and lifting weight as another sort of man might slide rosary beads through his fingers, and his unacknowledged gains functionally accentuated without fundamentally changing his basic shape. He was long and strong and immanently masculine, lacking both self-consciousness and vanity, and the brief vulnerability of his pale, scarred body in post-orgasmic relaxation was something Rumlow had no idea how to accept or understand.

They’d had an on and off again thing going for a while – since a few months before his promotion, if he wanted to count from the handjob Rollins had given him in a gas station bathroom outside of Tucson. Rumlow still occasionally beat off to the memory of Rollins’s solid mass pressed behind him, his long, rough hand working his dick as if it were his job, and the mingled scents of Pine-Sol, wintergreen Tic Tacs, and Fiji body wash. Rollins was good for him, Rumlow had decided – not so much a fuck buddy as a fuckable buddy, and that was not the sort of relationship he’d readily give up. It had certainly been a factor in why he’d chosen Rollins and not Blackwell for his SIC; it wasn’t the sex, but the steady temperament, consistency, and practicality that made it possible for them to keep on having sex without hassles or drama.

Rollins’s bed was roughly the size of a football field, but Rumlow had already learned that Rollins wasn’t a big fan of lying around naked in it. Rumlow had already pulled away from him to stretch out on the side he’d come to think of as his, hands behind his head and fingers laced against the king-sized pillow’s crisp, mint green case. This was the part where he either dozed or talked – not quite shop talk, but definitely not pillow talk – until they’d each sorted themselves back into their original and individual packaging. Sex hadn’t taken him far enough to make much of a return necessary, however; the conversation he’d had with Murphy had stuck in his mind with unpleasant tenacity.

Rollins sat up, giving Rumlow a sour look. Rumlow’s gaze dropped to the sensuous curve of Rollins’s full lower lip and the contrasting scar, pale and cruel, curling up from his jaw and pulling it downward. He felt a confused urge to reach out and run the pad of his thumb along it. If Rollins noticed where his attention had focused, he ignored it, and Rumlow quickly raised his eyes to meet Rollins’s flat, unimpressed stare.

“She _is_ more important, dumb shit,” Rollins said.

“What?” Rumlow’s eyebrows furrowed in surprise.

Rollins scowled. “Someone has clearly decided she’s more important than we are,” he continued, rolling his deep green eyes. His left didn’t quite follow his right, and Rumlow found that uneven expression of irritated condescension disconcertingly attractive. “I don’t know what the fuckin’ exchange rate is – like, maybe it’s two science division geeks equals four general field ops or three STRIKE agents, or maybe it has something to do with her specific field of study, or maybe it’s just something about her in particular. Maybe she’s Pierce’s bastard daughter. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rumlow echoed. “Jackie, I’m not following.”

“If no one’s stepping in to do anything about it, that’s a pretty good indication that no one cares. Or that their concern is with her.” Rollins sighed. “And that’s not that fuckin’ unusual, Brock. In terms of replaceability, it’s not news that they’re rarer birds than we are.”

Rumlow blinked. “I hear you, but…” he sighed, trailing off. “Hell, I don’t know.” He huffed out an impatient breath and sat up against the headboard. He usually liked these last moments under Rollins’s contradictorily indifferent yet possessive gaze, but now he just felt exposed. “I guess the thing with Morgan could have been an accident.”

“And so what if it wasn’t?” Rollins asked. “Shit like that happens from time to time. Someone turns into a problem; someone else irons that problem out.” He stood, sparing Rumlow a last glance before striding toward the bathroom. “Just fuckin’ let it go, Brock. You’re leaning in for a closer look at something that isn’t that deep or hard to understand.”

“Yeah,” Rumlow said, watching the play of muscles in Rollins’s ass and thighs. He stifled the urge to hop out of bed and trail after him, not for shower sex, but for… He wasn’t sure what for, but he knew he wanted something. To be moving, maybe – to be doing something. He eyed the clean, pale yellow sheets that waited in a neatly folded square on Rollins’s bureau, and wondered how much it would fuck up Rollins’s routine if he changed the sheets and made the bed for him. He could carry the hamper down the hall and start the laundry – get ahead of Rollins just enough to leave him wondering what to do with himself while Rumlow whistled in the shower.

Except for that it was Rollins’s house, clean and neurotically neat, with a place for everything and everything in its place. He couldn’t be made uncomfortable here where he belonged. Only Rumlow was out of place and restless, wishing he still smoked or that he could cat nap in the blue semi-darkness of closed blinds in late afternoon. Instead, he listened to the running water and waited, impatient and annoyed with himself, feeling sloppy, distantly sore, and not even a little relaxed from the orgasm Rollins had wrenched from him. At last, he heard the telltale squeak of the shower faucet followed by the sliding door’s metallic rattle. A few moments later, Rollins emerged, flushed from the shower and damp, towel wrapped around his waist.

“The thing with Murphy, though,” Rollins said, resuming their conversation as if there had been no interruption. “Is he going to need a refresher course on his place in the scheme of things?”

“No,” Rumlow replied. He stood. Rollins began rooting in his top bureau drawer, saving Rumlow from having to keep it casual while lubricant and semen slid down the his thighs. “This is one of those rare instances when pressing that point home would actually be counterproductive.” He started toward the doorway, then paused. “Y’know, I think he thinks of fucking Sutton as some kinda team building activity or something. It’s just like… hell, I dunno what it’s like.”

“Huh,” Rollins said. He sounded amused. “Murphy’s definitely comin’ from his own space, y’know?” He shook his head, pulling open another drawer and extracting a pair of gray sweats identical to the ones Rumlow knew he’d find in the bathroom laundry hamper. “The fuck were you shootin’ the shit about Sutton with Murphy for, anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” Rumlow said, and put the bathroom door between them.

*********************

Time passed. Rumlow didn’t exactly forget about Sutton – she was too much a part of SHIELD and HYDRA ops myth and legend to be entirely forgotten – but he didn’t think about her much, either. She was an opaque figure of uncertain importance, almost entirely occupied with her work within the science division’s bio engineering sector, and only rarely appearing along the margins of his particular operations’ center. HYDRA was global and Sutton, like himself, went where she was told to go according to HYDRA’s priorities. In the eight years since she’d walked out of the bar with Alvarez, their spheres had only overlapped twice, and neither of them had laid eyes on the other. Rumlow knew she’d been there because people talk, but this talk left him with the feeling that his men had gotten on the wrong end of an arrangement so long established and silently accepted that he’d thought its general shape natural and immutable. It wasn’t a feeling he cared to interrogate.

Seeing her at the La Plata installation came as a shock, though there was nothing startling about her appearance, and he’d known she’d be there. She was the entire reason he was there, or, rather, her work was the reason. Bio armor of some sort, though Rumlow suspected there was more to it than that – a little extra toughness and resiliency probably wouldn’t be of much interest to the people who’d made the Winter Soldier, and people in good standing weren’t assigned to La Plata. She had something going on that the higher ups thought worth their while, though, and that meant she and her team rated a guard or an escort for overseas travel. Rumlow didn’t know if that meant she rated her own STRIKE team or if his team’s return to DC coincidentally aligned with her team’s recall, but it didn’t matter either way.

He’d expected her to be the same as she’d been when last he’d seen her, though he really couldn’t say why. He’d met her when she’d been teetering on the outermost edge of youth only a little bit behind him, and now she’d arrived on that last, long, still plain where time’s pull suggests and insinuates and implies, but hasn’t yet begun to insist. The change in her wasn’t anything obvious like crow’s feet or grooves at the corners of her mouth, but a change in skin texture and a barely noticeable discrepancy between the color of her hair and eyebrows. She looked tired, underweight, too pale, and washed out under the fluorescents, but not bad, all things considered. Nothing a little sunlight, a few days off, and maybe some concealer couldn’t set right, anyway.

The real difference wasn’t in these changes that had to do with stress, overwork, and a subterranean environment, but in weight, and not the kind that registers on scales. There was a weight to Sutton that hadn’t been there before, and Rumlow could see it in her dark blue eyes and hear it in the steady cadence of her voice. There was more substance to her. She was not practicing her social laugh and telling people that she’d catch up with them soon. Sutton, whom he’d never heard described as sentimental or forthcoming, now came across as serious, self-contained, and too absorbed in her work to expend much time or energy on anything or anyone irrelevant to it.

He didn’t talk to her during the three days before their departure, but he saw her in the lab, moving with quick surety and giving orders with the expectation of immediate obedience. She was the sort of woman he liked working with, but not the kind he’d pick up at a bar, and that made him wonder how much he’d changed in the last eight years. Not that much, he thought. Definitely not.

**********************

No one looked good under fluorescent lighting, Rumlow thought morosely, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Especially not while surrounded by sterile white or pale green and dressed in nearly unrelieved white or black. His skin looked sallow and his hazel eyes had a flat, hard look to them, as if they concealed something both simple and venal. He tried a smiled, and that blank, brutally dull look turned into one of narrow, unpleasant cleverness. He let the smile drop and focused on running his fingers through the long top of his damp hair, trying for an illusion of tousled height. Without any product to help it along, it would dry into a smooth, depressing wave that flopped over one neatly clipped side and forward onto his forehead. Rumlow’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t used to disliking what he saw in mirrors, and knowing that most of the problem had to do with unflattering lighting and a horror movie insane asylum color scheme didn’t help. He couldn’t wait to leave La Plata; 0500 couldn’t come too soon.

The entire place had a penal quality to it, as if one of its functions were to homogenize and depersonalize its inmates, turning them into useful but interchangeable and ultimately replaceable parts. At every institutional level, HYDRA reinforced feelings of impersonal interdependency and less than special specialization, but it wasn’t that ordinary, immersive and weirdly comforting experience of mind fuckery that he felt at La Plata. Here, the steady, molding pressure applied equally to each individual wasn’t subtle, and nothing about it was meant to be pleasant. There was a disciplinary aspect to it, and a cold edge of warning: You are unremarkable and replaceable, was La Plata’s message to its staff, who adhered to its strict routines with the dedication of men and women who absolutely did not want to be singled out for anything.

Rumlow had encountered a handful of places like it within HYDRA, and knew it wasn’t just the atmosphere or the current head’s personality filtering down. La Plata wasn’t such a bad place for the guys with guns, whose main job was to enforce and contain as much as to guard from outsiders, and who had regularly scheduled days off. It was another story for the people who’d had their work moved here and new support staff assigned to them. Those people got assigned to La Plata by fucking up, probably in some way that ran across HYDRA’s principles more than its specific orders. They had enough value to be worth the effort at changing their attitudes, but it was the last effort that would be spent on them.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. A prison designed to rehabilitate as well as punish needs guards and a warden. Figuring out which people were the prisoners and which were the guards was the challenge, or it would be if Rumlow and his team weren’t just passing through.

He brushed his teeth quickly but thoroughly, rinsed the brush and clicked it into its case before tossing it into his bag. Rollins’s note had said to meet him at the lab after supper. He had enough sense to know what that meant, but he felt confused and annoyed more than excited. He had yet to enter a room or corridor that wasn’t equipped with unconcealed cameras, or a door he was authorized to open that had a lock. Rumlow understood the necessity of internal security, but this was something else entirely. He supposed that if he were one of the unlucky bastards assigned to this place, he’d develop a lower privacy threshold, but as it was, the idea of tag teaming Sutton with Rollins while a couple bored guys in front of a bank of security monitors rated them on a scale of one to ten wasn’t doing it for him.

He zipped his bag and tossed it into his locker – pale green, designated G for guest, and without a keypad or loop for a padlock or combination lock. Rumlow guessed that someone or, more likely, a team of someones, randomly searched the locker rooms, rearranging bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, riffling through thin stacks of folded clothes, and shuffling combs and toothbrushes. No one in their right mind would have anything they shouldn’t have on their two shelves and single tri-hook, but such searches weren’t really intended to turn up forbidden items. They were about that uncomfortable, helpless feeling that comes over a person who finds his few personal items carelessly rearranged while he’s been sleeping or working – that half-shamed fear and repressed anger that almost but never quite goes away no matter how many times you’ve wordlessly put your razor back with your aftershave and straightened your t-shirts.

_Get me the fuck out of here_, Rumlow thought, not for the first time, as he strode out into the hallway. _And what in the fuck did you do, Sutton, to end up in this hellhole?_

He doubted he’d have opportunity to find out. It wouldn’t do to ask, even if they had a chance to talk after arriving in DC. There was an etiquette to these things that no one had ever explained to him, but that he understood through a combination of self preservation instinct and a sort of stunted empathy. He had no authority or reason to demand vulnerability from Sutton, and nothing good could come of acquiring information about which he’d be helpless to avoid forming an opinion. All he needed to know was that it wasn’t his problem.

The installation was easily navigable, and there was no point in trying to be surreptitious, but he he still felt some uneasy surprise at how simple it was to just drop in at the lab after hours – no different, in its way, from stopping by Rollins’s place with a six-pack on his way home from work. The guards at the main corridor’s hub didn’t bat an eye when he passed their desk, and no one waited in the laboratory’s shadows to manually unlock the big, sliding doors separating the science division from the areas accessible to the general staff. Rumlow hesitated, frowning ponderously at the shadowed equipment on the other side of the wide doors’ bulletproof windows before stepping up to the biometric scanner. A chime rang, and the door slid open.

_Well, fuck_, Rumlow thought. He supposed there had to be a short list of personnel who could access the labs after hours, but there wasn’t any reason he should be on it. Did Sutton have to justify all her access choices? Rumlow imagined a note appended to a personnel chart tucked away in some central, electronic file – STRIKE Cmdr. Rumlow, Brock: Main Lab, Access Granted, 20:00 – 24:00, stud service.

He moved toward the back of the room, around the central tables and passed the half dozen, individual workstations set up at the perimeter. A partition separated the main area from storage, and beyond that stood a partially open door leading to a curved hall. Someone – Sutton or Rollins, Rumlow guessed – had taped a sheet of copy paper on the wall opposite the doorway; on it, they’d scrawled an arrow in red marker. Rumlow tore it down out of habit, balling it up in his hand as he strode along in the direction it had indicated. A red exclamation point marked the next door, which led to a small office and yet another door. That final door stood ajar, and beyond it, Rumlow could hear the faint sound of mingled male and female laughter.

Rumlow had seen arrangements like this one before, and knew they could be interpreted as either a perk or punishment reserved for a senior member who’d performed well above or dangerously below expectations. In a small facility like this one, the private room could mean Sutton was actually one of the bosses, but it was just as likely to be another indication that she’d been put on notice and was under close surveillance. Rumlow couldn’t imagine himself organizing a last minute threesome while under that sort of scrutiny, but that didn’t mean Sutton would find it equally unimaginable. Uniformly applied, constant pressure did not produce uniform results; where one person might become neurotically circumspect in behavior, another might cultivate obliviousness. Sighing, Rumlow stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

“Hello?” he called, projecting but not shouting. A single lamp lit an area outfitted like a small break room or lobby. He scanned it quickly, taking note of the generic layout --- a couch and coffee table on a square of brown carpet, and a kitchenette with a small table and two chairs on a smaller square of yellow linoleum. Behind the couch, another door stood partially open; low light, blessedly incandescent, spilled out through it, giving a little warmth to the nondescript carpet.

“Back here,” Sutton called back. The words came out clipped, low and stressed as if she were working hard for a level tone, and Rumlow grinned. It seemed that Rollins had either worked out which side of the microscope Sutton was on, or he didn’t care. Rumlow crossed the small living area in a few quick strides and pulled the door completely open.

Beyond it, Sutton laid nude, one hand knotted in her bed’s pale blue groundsheet and the other trembling in Rollins’s hair. Rumlow paused, momentarily struck by the sight. Rollins wasn’t a fan of giving head, not because of any big issue having to do with the act of cock sucking, but because of his jaw, which had been broken in several places in a nearly fatal accident. He’d recovered from that accident before Rumlow had met him, but Rumlow knew he was prone to aching and stiffness, and he wouldn’t do much more with Rumlow’s dick in his mouth than tease. Things could’ve been worse, and if Rumlow had fantasies about putting the big man on his knees in front of him, he kept them decently to himself. Still, seeing him going down on Sutton stirred mixed feelings of arousal and frustration made up of equal parts lust and aggression.

Rollins had her curled back, big hands holding her ass so that he could sit between her legs with his head bowed into her pussy. Sutton was doing most of the heavy work, thighs and stomach muscles visibly trembling as she struggled to maintain her pose, and Rumlow moved forward with unthinking, practical initiative. She gasped but didn’t open her eyes as he crawled onto the bed behind her and caught the backs of her knees, holding her high and wide on the broad pedestal of Rollins’s hands.

A moment later, she turned her face into the thigh seam of Rumlow’s trousers to stifle a shriek as Rollin’s thumbs, no longer part of a necessary support, slid inward. Rumlow couldn’t see what Rollins was doing, but he could imagine his hands turned, not taking Sutton’s weight but only balancing her on the upper pads of his palms as his callused thumbs slid in and out of her pussy. Sutton continued to pant into the rough fabric of Rumlow’s trousers, trying and failing to buck up into Rollins’s face, her reaching hand gone stiff and hyperextended against his brown curls. Their hold on her was more about suspension and support than strict restraint, giving her nothing from which to thrust. Sutton shuddered, not daring to pull Rollins’s hair and unable to do more than tilt upwards a fraction of an inch more; Rumlow could see the flicker of Rollins’s tongue between his reddened lips and hers.

“Fuck me,” she snarled, and Rumlow grinned, bright and keen and finally all the way there.

“Not yet,” he said, with no idea of where Jack was going with this. “Not yet, babe.”

“Bastard,” she hissed. She made a nearly articulate cry that deepened into something like a growl, and when she turned her head to stare up into Rumlow’s face, he found himself transfixed by her dark, dilated gaze. Her face and throat were flushed, her chest pinking in mottled splotches; her hair was damp at the temples, and sweat glistened on her upper lip and along her collar bones. She bared her teeth, and then her eyes widened. Her head tilted back and her shoulders pressed into the mattress, and Rumlow watched with avid hunger as her entire body tensed.

She came almost silently, with only a long drawn, frustrated keening passing between her parted lips. Rumlow spared a glance for Rollins, who’d drawn back to lap at her clit with quick, unrelenting tongue flicks. His plush lips were pink and slick; his cheeks and chin glistened. Rumlow imagined the taste of her as held her in place, heedless of her twisting movements as pleasure shifted into over-stimulation. She slid her hand to push at Jack’s forehead with the heel of her palm, and Jack finally sat back on his heels, lowering her bottom to the mattress. Rumlow licked his lips as he released his grip, looking down at her pale body, boneless and still save for the steady rise and fall of her chest.

“Gimme a minute,” Rollins said, his eyes still on Sutton as he rose from the bed. “And you,” he waved his hand at Rumlow disapprovingly. “Take off your boots, you fuckin’ barbarian.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Rumlow said, scooting back and swinging his legs off the bed as Jack strode past him to the bathroom. Sutton laughed.

“Yeah, definitely wanna take off your boots,” she said, rolling onto her side. Rumlow, who had never been overly burdened with modesty, smirked as he kicked the offending footwear to one side and stood to pull his t-shirt over his head. She watched with interest, unselfconsciously pressing her fingertips to her cunt while her gaze swept over his cut abs and then down lower as he stripped out of his trousers and boxer briefs. He made eye contact as he took his dick in hand, stroking from tip to base. Sutton watched, her expression almost meditative as she teased out the last tremors of her orgasm. “Not bad, big guy,” she finally said.

“Not bad, huh?” he said, more amused than annoyed. From the bathroom, he could hear running water and the brisk scrape of toothbrush bristles. “That all you got for me?”

“Hmmm,” Sutton replied. “Yeah, I think that’s all. Until I know what you have for me, anyway.”

She smiled, but there was no mockery in it, and Rumlow settled back onto the bed. “Is that so?” he asked, reaching to catch Sutton under the armpits and giving her a tug. She pedaled with her feet, pushing herself up to the headboard alongside him. Rumlow pulled her against him and she squirmed, wet fingers leaving warm streaks on his chest.

“Yeah, you and your...” She cast an insouciant glance in the direction of the bathroom.

“Uh, yeah,” Brock said. His smile suddenly felt a little too tight. “Me and Jack. We’re not a thing.”

“Mmm,” she agreed uncontentiously, but too easily. “You could do worse, y’know. He’s a good guy.”

Rumlow blinked. They weren’t quite snuggling together, but he could feel the smooth warmth of her legs and belly and the the roughness of her thigh stubble against his skin, and he could smell the mingled scents of her shampoo, toothpaste, and clean sweat. She’d leaned against him in a way that felt weirdly companionable – not terribly different from the way he’d have been sitting with anyone in a close quarters situation. She looked up at him, dark eyes serious as she nudged into his side, and settled one small, short fingered hand on his thigh.

“He is,” Rumlow finally said, unsure of returning to levity, but not trusting enough to move into deeper waters. “He’s the sort of guy you know has your back.”

Sutton nodded, eyes hooded.. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

The bathroom door opened. Rollins emerged, unselfconsciously nude and rubbing idly at the hinge of his jaw. “You two re-acquainting?” he asked, and Rumlow shrugged, tension dissipating suddenly and completely..

“I guess,” he answered. “You got the name this time, right?” He asked Sutton, flashing a grin. “I’m Brock, you’re Vanessa, and if you stop calling me ‘big guy,’ I won’t call you ‘babe.’”

Jack laughed, low and rumbling and honest. Vanessa’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” she said. “Brock. How’s that?”

“Gets me every time,” he answered.

“Good,” Jack said, shaking his head. He was still smiling, but his expression had shaded from polite inquiry to predatory interest. “Ready, ‘Nessa?

“Ready as I’m going to be.” She answered. Brock thought he could hear a hint of nervousness in her voice. The words came out a little too high and light, aiming for intrepid eagerness and coming up short.

“Great.” Jack said. “I got something for you, by the way,” he continued, uncurling the long fingers of his right hand to reveal a tube of lube. He tossed it in their direction, and Sutton picked it up. She smiled tightly, flipping the cap open and closed, open and closed. Rumlow looked at it, understanding beginning to dawn.

“It’s okay to change your mind,” Jack said, settling on the edge of the bed. He looked both earnest and eager, and Brock guessed that he was aiming for gentlemanly consideration. He was missing the mark by a wide margin; his calm, steady gaze conveyed the sort of inexorable patience Brock associated with interrogating rooms rather than with bedrooms. _I can wait_, that look said. _I __can wait for as long as __it takes.__ Babe._

Brock’s dick twitched against his stomach at the thought. Sutton shifted, turning her face more fully toward Jack even as she dropped the lube and turned her body in to his. He curled his arm up and around her, letting her shelter against him. He could feel the tension in her – the stiffness of her splay fingered hands and taut arms and legs, the stillness of her core and the unmoving, soft pressure of her pubis against his hip. Jack continued to wait, and Vanessa looked back at him, sharp chin uptilted and eyes ambivalently challenging, and Brock felt a spike of arousal at the thought of himself slid between her and Jack, protecting or devouring.

“Okay, yeah, okay,” she finally said, and Brock blinked as she turned more completely, her hands rising to take hold of his shoulders as she straddled him. “Down, boy,” she said, trying for a teasing tone, and Brock looked passed her to Jack.

Jack flashed his too-wide grin. “Just like the lady said,” he confirmed. Brock hesitated, feeling the insistent pressure of Vanessa’s hands and Jack’s stare. “Okay,” he finally said, and settled back into the pillows, letting himself slide down between Vanessa’s round thighs until he laid flat on his back.

“Where are the—”

“Here,” Jack said, handing a condom forward. Sutton took it and tore the package open, giving Brock a not quite genuine, impish smile as she unrolled it over his dick. Brock found himself looking past her to Jack, who’d knee walked forward to watch her small hands on him. Jack’s own hands – large, long, and unlovely, callused and blue veined – rested on the curve of her hips; against her smooth, beige skin, they looked outsized and potentially menacing. Brock dragged his gaze from the short-fingered hand smoothly stroking his newly sheathed dick to Jack’s gaze, transfixed by the same sight, and Jack’s soft, parted lips.

“I’ve never done this before,” Vanessa said matter-of-factually. Her voice was low, but not coy or flirtatious; she held Brock’s dick in a firm but gentle grip at its base and spoke simply and sparely. “I mean, I’ve had anal sex before, and I guess I like it a little less than Jack likes eating pussy.” Behind her, Jack chuckled, muffling the sound in her neck. Vanessa tilted her head, shivering as he licked a patch from collar bone to ear lobe, then shrugged him off. “But not two guys at once. I have heard,” she paused, pursing her lips as she considered her words. “I have heard it is… intense.

“I don’t know,” Brock said, taking a deep breath. She’d resumed her slow, steady stroking, and he thought she could do that for quite a while, keeping him going without taking him anywhere. He closed his eyes, schooling himself to stillness, and immediately felt the weight of Jack’s stare increase. He shivered. “I’ve never done it, either. Heard guys talk, but...” He trailed off.

“I’ve done it,” Jack said abruptly, and Brock opened his eyes, surprised. Jack shrugged. “I mean, it’s not rocket science.” He looked at Vanessa and considered. “Or any other kind of science.”

“Hmm,” she said, meditatively. “Let’s see, then.”

“Okay,” Jack agreed. He looked at Brock. “You first. Easy-peasy.”

“Easy-peasy,” Vanessa echoed, nervous amusement creeping into her voice as she rose up on her knees and then settled back down, guiding Brock’s dick inside of her.

Brock tensed, jaw tightening as she clenched, warm and wet around him. She looked down at him through dark eyelashes, and Brock could see color beginning to rise in her cheeks – a faint flush that could indicate either exertion or arousal. She rolled her hips experimentally, looking for her angle and almost immediately finding it. Brock sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth, but Vanessa kept her rhythm, dropping forward to grind against him as she moved her hips in a sharp, shallow arc.

“Just like that,” Jack said, catching Brock short in the act of reaching to pull her forward. “Just let her ride,” he ordered, his voice gone low and thick, and Brock shuddered. He imagined himself lying there, a stiff dick and a pretty picture, Jack’s voice holding him down and Vanessa riding him. The thought was both worrisome and intensely arousing, and Brock could not begin to sort through it with Vanessa atop him, soft grunts of effort escaping her parted lips with each tilt and grind.

“Okay, that’s enough, or I’m gonna get off watching,” Jack said abruptly and without a hint of embarrassment. He moved up behind Vanessa and pressed his hands to the backs of her thighs. “Knees up and around. Hold on like a l’il koala.”

The incongruous comparison startled Vanessa into a smile. “Like a koala,” she murmured as she shifted her position.

“Holding onto a tree,” Jack confirmed, and Brock couldn’t quite stifle a laugh. Vanessa held on, thighs gripping high on his hips, and Brock slipped his hands around her waist, holding her tight. He could feel the strong, fast rhythm of her heartbeat and the warmth of her skin; her breath felt hot against his chest.

“Nope, let up a little. He’s going to need room to move,” Jack guided.

Brock loosened his grip and Vanessa raised herself on her knees, still high and wide, but now with only the first few inches of Brock’s dick inside of her. Jack cupped Brock’s balls in his hand, rolling them gently, and Brock licked his lips, shivering Jack he ran one fingertip from the base of his cock to Vanessa’s slick, smooth stretched vaginal opening.

Vanessa stilled; Brock thought she might be holding her breath. He licked his lips, forcing himself to remain still, and then he heard the lube’s cap clicking open.

“Steady,” Jack breathed.

“Cold!” Vanessa gasped. Brock ran his hands up and down her sides, and she bowed her forehead against the base of his throat. He could feel the tension in her body – tight and still and working against itself to accommodate Jack’s lubed fingers. Brock knew exactly what that felt like. He shivered at the thought.

“Yeah, it’ll warm up,” Jack said. “Get your ass up higher. No… just… yeah.” Brock could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “You feel that, Brock?” he asked.

Brock frowned. Vanessa made an odd, high pitched sound, and then Brock blinked in surprise. “Yeah, oh, fuckin’ hell. That’s… it’s...”

“Yeah, it is.” Jack chuckled, “It sure is.” The repetition shaded into something almost a growl. Brock drew in a deep, shuddering breath and stared up at the ceiling, focused on the feeling of Jack’s index finger sliding in and out of Vanessa’s ass, and pressing upward hard enough for Brock to feel the stroking pressure. It wasn’t much – the idea of it was more stimulating than the actual sensation – but Brock knew that would change. Atop him, Vanessa’s grip on him tightened, and he let his own hands tighten reassuringly around her waist.

“You okay, ‘Nessa?” Jack asked, and Brock felt a twinge of selfish worry when it took her a moment to answer.

“I think so,” she finally said. Her voice sounded small and tense, but more nervous than afraid.

“Good,” Jack said. “Red means all stop; no discussion; we’re done. Other than that, “No,” “Stop,” and “Wait,” will work just fine.” Brock shivered, listening to Jack giving these last calm, steady instructions while he continued to work his finger in and out of Sutton’s body and, incidentally, against Brock’s dick. “Gonna do this smooth and easy, and then no one’s gonna move until you say the word, ‘Nessa. Got it?”

“Uh huh,” she answered. Brock glanced down in time to see her lick her lips. Then he could see Jack positioning himself behind her, and for a moment, he could imagine the scene from Jack’s perspective – Vanessa, curled into a ball on top of him with her round, heart shaped ass in the air, and all but the last couple inches of Brock’s dick in her pussy.

The image vanished from his thoughts a moment later as Jack dropped the lube to one side and, taking his dick firmly in hand, pressed forward. At first, Brock was only aware of increasing pressure, as if Vanessa were flexing tighter and tighter around him, but then the sensation resolved into that of steady breach, though not of his body. He could hear Vanessa’s stuttering, breaths as Jack penetrated her, and Jack’s voice murmuring, “Steady,” and “Easy, girl, you’ve got this,” and his own heartbeat as he held his breath. He was inside of Vanessa, and he could feel Jack’s cock sliding alongside his own; he could feel delirious, nearly impossible constraint.

“Nope, stay where you are,” Jack’s voice had gone ragged. “Leave him room to move when you’re ready.”

“I can’t,” Vanessa panted, and Brock peered down at her. Her brow had furrowed, and her mouth was drawn in a tight, white line of strain. “I don’t know if I can,” she forced out. Her head dropped, and her hair fell in a dark, concealing veil. Her grip on him tightened, and he began running his own hands in a mindless pattern over her back and flanks.

“You can,” Jack said. “You’ve got it all,” he continued, and Brock could tell he was struggling not to gasp out the words. Take your time. Bear down. Breathe.”

He couldn’t say exactly how he knew when Vanessa found her bearings, but he felt something in the moment before she said, “Okay, I’m okay, let’s go.” Nothing felt looser or more relaxed, and he could feel the intrusive pressure of Jack’s cock against his own as insistently as he had since Jack had begun pushing inside of Vanessa’s compromised body, but something changed, and Brock didn’t wait for Jack’s go-ahead to attempt a slow, careful upward tilt.

Vanessa stuttered out a vocalized breath; Jack made a sound halfway between a growl and a moan. Brock – open mouthed, wide-eyed, and silent – repeated the motion, moving his hips in a series of slow, carefully shallow thrusts. His fingers dug into Sutton’s waist, then eased up as Jack’s hands clamped over them. Then Jack began to move.

Later, he would think about how it had been to look up at Jack from that position, spread and on his back, and about how Jack had looked down at him over Vanessa’s head – the sense of himself fucking Jack while at the same time submitting to him. He’d think about how it had been to see Vanessa with her eyes clenched shut, lost inside herself with whatever overriding sensation their bodies were inducing in her. In the moment, however, he had only a confused sense of Vanessa’s body as an adapter barely able to contain and transmit the energies running through it. There was no words for it but _hot_ and _tight_ and _too much_, and nothing that wasn’t concentrated in that part of him that was caught inside of Vanessa and alongside Jack.

Vanessa cried out in a high, wavering voice, sounding less like a woman in the grip of passion and more like an animal in a trap. Her body shuddered, muscles flexing and relaxing in an uncontrolled wave, and Brock realized she was coming again, not from sexual stimulation but from sheer, unyielding internal pressure. The idea of it struck him as deliriously erotic – to be forced over the edge in that way, caught in the gears of physical necessity, willing or not and ready or not – and then he was coming, too, hands clamped on her waist, and hips canted upward in a final paroxysm of desire not entirely dissimilar to her own.

Brock thought she came twice more before Jack finished and let her collapse on top of him. It seemed rude to push her aside, but he didn’t need to worry about it; after taking a few, deep breaths, she jerked an elbow backwards into Jack’s chest. Jack sat back, muttering something that might have been an apology as he pulled out of her, and Sutton rolled over to sprawl on her back beside Brock. She laid there, eyes closed and breathing in fast, shallow pants while Jack stripped off his condom and dropped it into the trash.

There were, Brock finally noticed, a set of pristine white sheets folded atop the small, otherwise bare dresser against the wall by the bathroom doorway. He looked at the sheets, deeply amused, and mentally counted down one minute, then two, then three— and then Jack pulled Vanessa up and half-dragged, half-carried her to the bathroom. _Ladies first_, Brock thought as the water kicked on. He imagined Vanessa leaned against Jack’s wet, hard muscled chest, slobbering into the skin above his nipple while he worked shampoo into her hair. _I’m not saying you can’t be trusted to wipe your own ass_, he imagined Jack saying in his usual, flatly declarative tone, _and __if I help out a li’l, _ _I don’t have to say it, __and __I’ll know you’re clean. _Of course, Jack, would say no such thing. Brock snorted a laugh and waited for his turn.

***********

According to the clock, he’d slept about an hour. His shower, taken more for Jack’s benefit than his own and involving little more than a quick soaping of relevant parts, hadn’t washed away his sleepiness, and he hadn’t felt like making an issue of it when he’d come out to find Jack and Vanessa curled together atop the fresh sheets. Vanessa had sent Jack for a glass of water, and he’d ended up between them, warm and snug and too comfortable to care what Vanessa might make of the arrangement.

Warm and securely cocooned, Brock’s reasons for wanting to return to his own bed felt distant and unimportant. Vanessa wouldn’t care if they stayed, and he had never slept with Jack before, or, at least, not like this – nestled together out of simple affection and not for needed warmth or because of limited space. Then he remembered that they were in the tiny chief scientist’s quarters of one of HYDRA’s medical R&D facilities, not a hotel room, and that staying would mean returning with Jack to their quarters while the facility awakened around them. The phrase “walk of shame” came to mind, and Brock sighed into Vanessa’s hair.

“I set the clock for 03:00,” Vanessa murmured into the darkness. “Plenty of time to get back to where you ought to be if you don’t want to leave right now.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her lowered voice sounded both sharp edged and amused. “As if people don’t already know how the redoubtable STRIKE commander and his SIC spent their evening.”

She was right, and Brock knew it. “There’s a difference between what people don’t know and what they agree not to know.” he said, pitching his voice low. If Jack was awake, Brock couldn’t tell it; the rhythm of his breathing continued unchanged

“There’s a fine distinction between those two things, and it changes from time to time,” Sutton observed.

“But you don’t worry about it,” Brock stated. He pulled her closer against him in an embrace that once again felt more companionable than sexual or romantic. She had not bothered to slide into a t-shirt and sweats, and his hand and arm slid against smooth, bare skin. Sleep warm and relaxed, she felt soft and pliant – neither hard bodied nor doughy soft. Brock absently stroked the slight swell between her sternum and navel, feeling the firm give of her stomach.

“No,” Vanessa said, oblivious to Brock’s touch. “I never did. I just,” she stopped, and her shoulders shifted against Brock’s back. “I think that was a good policy because now I don’t need to worry about. It’s just,” another pause. “It’s the way it is.”

“Why, though?” He asked abruptly, lowering his voice further. “I mean, I know it’s none of my business, and you don’t have to tell me anything, but I’m curious, y’know? What do you get out of this? I don’t get it.”

She sighed, pulling away from him and rolling onto her back to look up at him. She or Jack had turned off the overhead lights, but the bathroom light had only been turned down to a yellow glow and the door left open. It didn’t quite illuminate her face, but turned it into something made of layered shades of darkness. “Well, I’ll grant that I don’t usually do things on such a…” she trailed off, and Brock could imagine the look of faint, self-directed exasperation on her face as she searched for the right words. “…such a quid pro quo basis. Deals involving sex are usually a very bad idea,” she finally continued. “But Jack’s a good guy.”

“I don’t mean tonight specifically,” Brock clarified, resolutely ignoring the new avenues of exploration she’d casually and undoubtedly intentionally opened. “In general. I don’t get it.”

“What do you mean?”

She sounded honestly curious. Brock stared into the unreadable, blue-gray shadows of her face, and felt, not for the first time, that his failure in understanding had less to do with his object’s obscurity, but rather with its dwarfing size and broad inscriptions. “I’ve wondered since we met at the Trisk,” he finally said. “Everyone was saying, ‘Yeah, that’s just Vanessa. She’s fucking her way through ops; it’s all good,’ like it’s just another part of the scenery, like there aren’t any fraternization rules, or reasons for those rules, or—”

“But these things happen all the time,” she said, cutting him off. “It _is_ normal. You’ve been doing some fraternizing of your own.” She didn’t sound angry, or cynically amused, but only cool and forthright. “Same department, same team, CO and SIC,” Sutton made a soft, tut-tut sound. “Very bad for discipline.”

“That’s not--,” Brock took a deep breath. “Well, okay, that’s exactly what it looks like, and I guess that’s what matters.”

“But there’s a difference between what people don’t know, and what they decide not to know,” Vanessa said, echoing his earlier words. “And some of that difference, in some quarters, has to do with whether total net gains are observably higher than they would be if people decided to know.” Sutton paused. When she spoke again, her explanatory tone turned incisive. “So, you tell me: what do you get out of it?”

Brock said nothing, startled into silence at finding himself on the receiving end of that question. There were a variety of answers he could give her, ranging from shallow and flippant to deeply personal, but giving voice to any of them in this place, to her, with Jack maybe sleeping or maybe listening, felt obscurely wrong. He started to let it go, deciding to close his eyes and drift back into sleep, when she surprised him by giving her answer instead of waiting for his.

“Maybe that’s a little unfair,” she said, sounding tired, “turning it back on you like it’s all the same. But, sometimes it is. Think about all the things people do when they’re under pressure, or when they’re out in the field for too long, or when they come too close to the edge, or when things go really well or really bad, and there’s something to celebrate or mourn or forget.”

Brock frowned, saying nothing. Vanessa turned her head against the pillow to look at him, and with her back to the open bathroom door, her face fell into deeper shadow. Brock thought he saw her brows knit and then smooth, and when she spoke again, her tone was gentler. “I’m not saying that’s all it’s ever been, or that’s what it is with you and Jack,” she said. “I don’t know what you have with Jack. I don’t care, either; I just know that I can’t have anything like that in my department because it really would turn into a discipline issue and that I’m not wired to be someone’s faithful girlfriend or wife. Whatever benefits there are to being a single woman on the outside looking for no-strings aren’t worth the hassles. So, I keep it in-house, but out of the lab, and with guys who know how it is.”

“Okay,” Brock said noncommittally, and what came to mind was Jack saying, _You’re leaning in for a closer look at something that isn’t that deep or hard to understand_. “Okay, that makes sense.”

Vanessa sighed, returning her gaze to the semi darkness above them. The sound wasn’t theatrical, but it was loud in the quiet – more resigned than impatient, and edged with old annoyance. “Well, now that you understand and approve, I guess everything’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Brock said. “It’s just—” he stopped, mentally reviewing his next words. “Hey, let’s not do this, alright? Everything’s good tonight.”

Vanessa’s laugh was brief, low, and cynical. “Yeah, we’re good. It’s all good.” Brock thought he sensed an eye roll. “I need my sleep, big guy. Stay or go.”

Brock felt no particular surprise when Jack slipped his arm around him. Awake, then, and, in all likelihood, he’d been awake all along. “Staying, I guess,” he said. “G’night, Vanessa. And remember, I won’t call you ‘babe’ if— ”

“Goodnight, _Brock_,” she said back to him, unwilling amusement creeping into her voice. He sensed rather than saw her eye roll as she turned back onto her side, facing away from him. .

********************

The next time he saw her, there was pain, first and foremost – pain so diffuse and consuming that he could not begin to separate one injury from another. Almost worse than the pain was his awareness that it was being held in abeyance. There was something like a wall of fog between him and it, muffling it and concealing the specifics of its shape. Even so, it was unbearable, and that it wasn’t being allowed to have its way with him meant that somehow, in some way he could not and did not want to imagine, it could get worse.

First there was the pain, and then there was bright, white light shining over him, and after that was Vanessa looking down at him. She did not look sympathetic or horrified, but cold, distant, and narrow. Calculating. There was nothing for him behind her shuttered eyes, and looking up at her, Brock felt a terror completely separate from the pain he’d just begun to connect with the smell of jet fuel and flame.

“If you could do it again, would you run?” She asked. Her tone was low and urgent. “Would you run now, if you could?”

He blinked at her. There was a test here, but he didn’t know the right answer. She had a syringe in one gloved hand; she held his IV line in her other hand. It occurred to him that this might be one of those rare instances when there are no wrong answers. Given a straightforward choice between painkillers and a quick death, Brock thought he might well choose death.

She leaned down, her gaze darting away and then returning to his face. Her skin looked thin and stretched too tight, her lips bloodless. Her eyes were red rimmed and set in purple caverns of puffy flesh; her breath smelled rancid. “I know where Jack is,” she murmured. Then, again: “Would you run if you could? I need to know right now.”

Would he run? To or with Jack? Away from SHIELD? Or HYDRA? Brock didn’t know, but Vanessa’s lips were thinning, and he knew he was running out of time to answer. And, when it came down to it, questions of running to or with or from were irrelevant.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.” He couldn’t recognize his own, barely audible voice, but Vanessa heard him. She didn’t waste time asking him to repeat himself.

“Then we’re going now,” she said, injecting the syringe’s contents into his line. “You will do exactly as I say, and I will put you back together when we’re clear.” She gave him a thin, cheerless smile. “You’re going to crash harder than those helicarriers, but I think you’re going to thank me when it’s done,” she said.

Those were his last linear memories for a very long time.

******************

The new armor had a fucked up skull design on the helmet and crossed bones on the chest piece. Brock saw it when one of the desk riding honchos from engineering – Manning, he thought his name was – flung the tarp off the cart. The cart was red and white metal on clear plastic wheels – the sort of thing you’d expect to see room service pushing down the hall of a cheap hotel. It wasn’t heavy laden with plates, glasses, and covered dishes, but with what appeared to be glorified tac gear. The tac gear looked like it had been equipped with some sort of fucked up punching machines, and someone had tried to get artistic with it, but it was, indeed, jumped up tac gear under a tarp on a cheap catering cart. Fat and perspiring, wearing a limp, white oxford with sweat stains under the armpits and an expression of brutal determination on his jowly face, Manning lifted the helmet from the top shelf with his soft, pink hands and, ignoring Brock completely, asked Vanessa something Brock couldn’t make sense of.

A woman in a pale yellow shell top and a blue pencil skirt laughed, high and jagged. Her small wrists were adorned with slim, red and orange bangle bracelets, and she held a Beretta in her right hand. Her cerise fingernails were chipped and ragged.

A trio of impossibly tall and slender men in lab coats stood around a console. Blood flowed in from under the door, and Brock’s boots turned from black to vivid turquoise when it touched them. He heard gunfire, and the tall men dissipated into shadows, then disappeared entirely.

Someone fiddled with the dial on the front of a device that looked like an out-sized vacuum cleaner attachment, and a twelve foot strip of nothing was immediately cut out of the world in front of it. Someone else screamed, and so did wood and metal as integral pieces of floors, walls, and ceilings vanished. Then the device made a sputtering sound and stopped; a gruff, male voice said, “Well, _fuck_.”

He was lying down again, and the need to move was maddening – he could not understand how he was not thrashing and screaming on the narrow surface beneath him. There was a hole in a corner drop ceiling panel, and a pair of bright blue eyes peered out at him from it. The owner of those eyes leaned down to get a better look at him, and Brock saw a pale, androgynous face framed by sleek, black-green hair. Something about this situation didn’t seem quite right, but Brock couldn’t quite put his finger on the problem. He tried to call out for the person in the ceiling to come back when he or she backed into the darkness again, but his lips and tongue would not form the words. He laid brutally still and silent, inwardly writhing.

Later, when the shadows were long and the sheets a different color, he heard a sound like thunder that gradually shaded into a man’s voice.

“If he dies, I’ll—”

“Kill me?” A woman asked. She sounded tired, annoyed, and not a bit worried. “What do you think was going to happen him? Do you seriously think anything I did could substantially shorten his life?”

The shadows shaded abruptly into deepest purple. He waited to hear how the man would answer, but there was nothing. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was seated by a window with a peach and yellow crocheted afghan on his lap. It was a mindlessly cheerful, infantile thing – the sort of thing one might see draped over the legs of vacant eyed nursing home residents. Brock felt an immediate, bone deep revulsion for it, but he did not throw it away from him. Instead, he focused on his breathing and took careful inventory of the room.

It was small, and he was willing to bet he wasn’t in SHIELD’s custody or HYDRA’s. Bright sunlight spilled through faded lace sheers that fluttered inward on a warm breeze. The wall clock gave the time as 1:57 PM, and the angle of the sun agreed with it. He could see a twin bed outfitted with white and yellow sheets and blankets, and a small bureau. A pitcher of water, a drinking glass, and a bell stood on a small, round table between his chair and the window; another chair stood across from him. The walls were white, the floor green and the door open, which could mean he was with friendlies or that there was nowhere to go. Brock eyed the bell, then carefully reached for it.

He didn’t know how he could have failed to notice his hands, which had been resting on his afghan covered thighs, but he had, and his heart lurched as he registered the burns. His skin looked pink and red and melted, and his fingers hooked; the hand reaching for the bell was not a hand, but a horror movie claw. Brock did not cry out, but his breath came faster. He felt no pain, but only tightness, as if he were wearing a too-tight latex glove that would surely tear if his movements were not slow and small and careful. That feeling was not limited to his hands, he quickly realized; his face, arms, legs, and feet all felt tight and weirdly numb, as if they’d been coated in a low grade, topical anaesthetic. The notion of safety suggested by the open door faded as he carefully flexed his fingers and then his toes. He looked at his hand and wondered what was under the blanket and why there was no mirror on the wall.

When he extended his arm towards the table again, his fingers brushed the bell’s handle, bumping instead of curling around it. It barely made a sound, but he heard hurrying footsteps almost immediately.

“Brock?” It was Jack’s voice, steady and low, but Brock felt a surge of hope that increased in intensity as the footsteps drew closer. “That had better fuckin’ be you,” he heard Jack mutter, and then Jack appeared in the doorway.

Jack’s left wrist was wrapped, and it looked like a few of his fingers were bandaged, and Brock thought he looked thinner than last he he’d seen him, and more tightly wound. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, but it put a nervous edge on the waves of relief Brock felt at the very sight of him. It was as if he’d been stranded on a desert island, and Jack Rollins was the first person he’d laid eyes on in years. He wanted to go to him – to touch him, to grasp, pull, and hold him, to assure himself of his solidity – but he did none of those things. Instead, he looked at Jack’s expressionless face and the new scars freckled across his left cheekbone and sprayed into his hairline, and waited for whatever came next.

“You all the way here?” Jack asked. It was a flat inquiry, but Brock could feel his heart beating faster, as if were on the edge of his seat in anticipation of his own answer.

“Where the hell else would I be?” He said. His voice was raw and scratchy from more than simple disuse; the words felt as if they’d scraped and torn their way up through his throat. His too-tight face stretched even tighter, distorting the expression of shock and dismay that tried to surface.

Jack crossed the room in three quick strides and filled the glass on the table.

“Here,” he said, lifting the glass. “Don’t give me any shit about it.”

Brock felt no urge to give Jack any shit whatsoever, even when Jack held the glass to his lips. The water was fresh and cold, with lemon wedges floating amidst cubes of ice, and Brock wondered how long he’d been in this room, and how many times the pitcher had been replaced and the glass rinsed. He could hear no sounds other than those of birds, rustling leaves, and the occasional buzz of a cicada. Were he and Jack alone? How long had he been sitting in this chair or lying in that bed while Jack swept, dusted, and washed around him, periodically taking time to slice lemons for his regularly freshened water? He imagined Jack ordering him with his chores, cleaning and changing him along with the bed sheets, and shuddered, though needing care while recovering from an injury was not something of which he’d ever been ashamed, and Jack was the logical choice to do it for him. “Where are we?”

“Safe house,” Jack answered. “We’re okay for now, and you don’t need to worry, so let me get through these questions I need to ask you.” He took a deep breath. “What’s your full name and birth date?”

A head injury, then, on top of the burns. “Brock Daniel Rumlow,” he rasped. “October 17, 1965.” He closed his eyes and took a breath. “It’s 2014. Barack Obama is president. I’m… ah, fuck, Jackie, what’s—“

“What’s happening right now?” Jack asked. His expression was blank; Brock felt mounting trepidation. “What do you see and hear around you?”

“Jack—”

“I’ll answer your questions when you answer mine.”

“Water,” he said, and Jack picked up the glass without hesitation. The sleeves of his moss green henley were pushed up to his elbows, and Brock watched the play of muscle in his strong forearm. It was interesting in an odd, disconnected way – like watching the movement of a predatory animal on a TV documentary. Brock struggled for presence, and re-entered it as the water spilled over his lips. Another wave of anxiety hit him, and along with it, an almost overpowering sense of grateful happiness. A thin stream of water spilled over his chin, and Jack wiped it away with one broad thumb. He wanted to lick it.

“There’s just us, “ Brock said, keeping his voice level. His eyes followed the glass as Jack set it back on the table. He paused, glancing upward. The ceiling was unmarred, white plaster. He thought of bright blue eyes peering down out of darkness, then carefully shook his head. “I hear birds. Cicadas. Car out on the highway?” he hazarded. Jack said nothing, but Brock nevertheless felt a sense of growing relief. “Nothing special in here. Bed, table, chair. And me, sitting with this shitty blanket.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jack said. “Alright.”

It was good to hear the relief in Jack’s voice corresponding with his own feelings, and for a moment, Brock felt a sense of warm congruity that made him want to let further questions slide. Somewhere on the outer edges of his consciousness it struck him as odd that he was not more concerned when there was so much here that should be setting off bells and whistles, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. It was just so damned good to see Jack, to whom he’d never realized he’d formed such a strong attachment. _I’m drugged_, he thought. _Pain killers. That’s gotta be it._

“What happened?” he finally asked, pushing through the comfortable, radiant desire to simply sit there for as long as he could with Jack standing over him. “What’s happening now?” He thought over his condition as well as he could. Again, it occurred to him that he should be more upset –that, ordinarily, the thought of disfigurement would crowd out almost every other consideration – but he couldn’t quite stir that awareness into any real feeling. “Something sure as hell isn’t right, I can tell you that much.”

“No, no it’s not,” Jack agreed. He pulled out the other chair and dragged it around before settling into it. With the light in his face, Brock could see that the new scars were still relatively recent, healed to soft, baby pinkness instead of hard whiteness. He hadn’t picked up any summer tan; if anything, he looked too pale, as if he’d been stuck on desk duty with some serious injury over winter. More worrisome than either of those obvious things, Brock thought that something about Jack’s face wasn’t quite right. There was an unbalanced hollowness to it that didn’t match the rest of him; it was that hollowness, Brock saw, that had given him that initial impression of excessive thinness.

He looked down at his hands, pink and red twisted claws that they were, and wondered what Jack was seeing. Again, he felt he should care more; this time, he found he did care enough to be afraid to ask.

“You damned near died when the helicarriers fell,” Jack finally said. “Rescue workers got you out, but you were going to die in custody on some burn ward,” he continued, setting the glass back on the table. It seemed to Brock that Jack’s fingers lingered on his as he took it away. “I saw pictures. I don’t know how the fuck you didn’t die.”

“Jack...” Brock began. “Jackie, I think you need to back this up a little further.”

Jack sighed. “Yeah. Sorry. You’re going to have to bear with me on this one, boss, because nothing happened in any damned order.” He frowned, ponderous and intimidating, and Brock felt a wave of exasperation, grief, and free floating anger. “Look, we lost, alright? You know that, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah, I figured out that much.”

“So, the helicarriers fell, and the Trisk went from SHIELD headquarters to a pile of fuckin’ rubble. We were both in it during that,” he paused, and his mouth twisted into a wry smile, “transitional period. Fuckin’ Romanoff cracked my skull pretty good, but aside from that and a broken wrist, I was in decent shape when they took me into custody. You on the other hand...” he took a deep breath. “Honest truth, boss, if I’d found you like that, I wouldn’t have called for the EMTs. I’d have put you out of your misery.”

“How bad?” Brock asked. Jack looked at him. A line had formed between his brows, and his mouth had taken on that oddly prissy, pursed almost-pucker that Brock had learned to associate with troubling but not catastrophic news. “C’mon, Jack. How bad could it have been if I’m sitting here right now? And what do you mean, you saw pictures? I remember you used to be able to do a fairly decent job of giving reports.”

That stung him. Jack sat up a little straighter, but Brock noticed his brow wasn’t smoothing.

“Look, I’m getting a lot of this second hand. Like I said, they took me into custody, and I think you’re smart enough to know how and why I saw pictures of you in the hospital. They said they were going to cut the drugs and bring me a recording so I could listen to you die.” His tone didn’t waver, but he reached for Brock’s glass and took a long swallow of water. “I thought I did hear you die. But, anyway–”

“No, fuck that,” Brock interrupted, his voice harsh and jagged. “Who?’

“Oh, never fuckin’ mind who,” Jack said. “We’re not going back. We’re not getting any damned revenge. It’s over.”

Brock looked down at his hands again. He felt angry, helpless, but also empty, like an abandoned house haunted by forgotten ghosts. “Okay. Continue.”

“The Fredericksburg facility was – hell, maybe still is – running. They were working on some kind of regeneration serum, or, well,” he huffed out an annoyed breath, “another super soldier knock-off drug, really. Superish soldier. Nothing fancy. Just something to make us a little faster, a little stronger and more resilient, and a little harder to injure while bumping up the healing process. Sutton was in on that little gem, and she had something else going on, too.”

“Sutton.” Brock remembered her face, white and drawn, leaning over him while he lay in agony under a blazing, white light.

“Yeah, Sutton,” Jack agreed. “She was there. So were a few guys from Zeta, and they were the ones who got you. I don’t know the details, but that’s when Sutton got hold of you.” .

“She did something to me,” Brock said. “I just barely remember her asking me if I’d run if I could. And she said she knew where you were.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, they tell us whatever they figure’ll get us moving, don’t they?” His face twisted in disgust. “Sure, she knew were I was. It was on the fuckin’ news: HYDRA agents taken into custody after Insight went down. The bastards were really dedicated to the idea that me and Pierce were poker buddies or some damned thing, but they finally let it go, and yeah, it was common knowledge we were going into storage. Someone with a little more insider knowledge of such things could’ve guessed where.”

“Are you okay?” Brock asked, and Jack gave him a long, flat look. It was the sort of look that would have ordinarily made Brock stop to consider whatever had just come out of his mouth, but this time it came across as more worried than judgmental. It was as if Jack was waiting and gauging… something. It made Brock feel worried, too, and anxious, and guardedly curious.

“I’m fine,” Jack finally said. “What about you? That’s not a, uh, typical… ah, hell,” he said, clearly exasperated. “Does it seem to you like something’s not right? More going on in your head than you can account for, or things that don’t make sense to you? Like, you’re not yourself?”

Brock said nothing. Jack pursed his lips again, then sighed. “Look, Sutton wasn’t on our side. She wasn’t SHIELD, but she was pretty fuckin’ disenchanted with HYDRA. I guess she was on her own side well before the end of it. The serum she gave you was supposed to have been her parting gift to HYDRA. It’s less aggressive but a lot more tenacious than what they started you out on when they got you out of that hospital. You’re going to make a damned near complete recovery. But, you’re also an empath now.”

“I’m a what?” Brock blinked. The word left a white blank in his head; nothing connected to it, and nothing led from it. Empath. He cocked his head, and imagined he must look like a perplexed buzzard. “I’m… why?” he rasped, utter bafflement still holding every other thought at bay. Jack said nothing, and Brock wanted to wither under his stoic regard; he felt stupid and inexplicably embarrassed, as if he’d intentionally chosen this new and perplexing ability over some other, more understandable and useful talent. He felt angry, grateful, worried, resolute, relieved, humiliated… and then the penny dropped. He, himself, did not feel any of those things. “Well, fuck,” he said, staring at Jack, and Jack – strong, solid, and previously impenetrable – stared expressionlessly back at him.

*************************************

It was sabotage, of course. It was a very watered down version of the hard as nails and stronger than steel superhero bullshit every military on earth wanted, but with a little something extra added to it: a little something that would re-wire the brain of every soldier to whom it was administered so he’d feel everything happening around him as if it were happening to himself. If it had rolled out as Vanessa had intended, HYDRA would have gotten a handful of what Jack called superish soldiers, but when the serum went out as new standard issue for all HYDRA ops, they’d have found themselves with an elite fighting force that couldn’t bring itself to fight. Brock doubted Vanessa had ever had any illusions that she was going to end warfare or even destroy HYDRA with it, but she’d sure as hell meant to hurt HYDRA, and lay it low long enough to run, run, run, and hide where she’d never be found.

***************************************

They parted ways in Manitoba, just a little south of Lake Winnipeg, and Brock knew that Vanessa had only gone that far with them out of a sense of obligation. She needed to head east, where she had connections that could get her off the continent; they were going north, where they could hunker down in isolation. As had become usual, Brock’s feelings on their split were mixed; he got along with either Jack or Vanessa, but things became very tense very quickly when he had to deal with Jack and Vanessa. The RV provided more space than a car would have, but there simply wasn’t a way for two people on a road trip together to outright avoid one another. He missed Vanessa, and he was glad she was gone.

The RV was a bit of luck that Brock believed would carry him and Jack enough for a proper disappearance. Every branch of American law enforcement was still on the lookout for HYDRA fugitives, but HYDRA’s regenerative strength had always lain in its multitudinous, unmarked connections and outwardly expanding networks of relationships as much as in its multitudinous heads. The RV, a Four Winds Motor Coach that cost as much as some people’s house’s, had belonged to Montgomery’s ex-husband’s second cousin, who hailed HYDRA from a farm in North Carolina, and hadn’t been to DC since her senior class trip in ‘88. Brock had felt her grief as a heavy, palpable cloud while she’d told them she could get away with not noticing it was gone for six weeks. They’d be done with it inside of three weeks. They weren’t heading to a national park where they could pay extra for electricity and wifi, but to the world’s frozen edge and a kind of solitude Brock once would have done nearly anything to avoid. Not the sort of place for RVs with foldout awnings and cute slogans painted on the sides, and by the time Montgomery’s ex’s cousin had to make her statement to the cops, the RV would be abandoned and their trail gone cold.

Brock still had only a general outline of events between the Triskelion’s fall and the North Carolina safe house, and only the vaguest notion of what story his disconnected, hallucinatory memories told. Vanessa had filled him in on more of what had happened than Jack had been able to cover, but she’d still only given him broad outlines.

For starters, the Fredericksburg facility hadn’t been a fully functioning cell connected to the DC hub, but a laughably small, mismatched collection of HYDRA scientists, soldiers, and administrative types who’d gone into lockdown after Romanoff’s info dump. They’d been trapped and desperate down in their hidden warren, and God alone knew what they’d thought they were accomplishing, but Vanessa’s survival instincts had told her that she had to get the hell out of there. Brock, who’d had nothing to lose and everything to gain, had been the safest choice she could make to that end. He hadn’t been able to sit upright unassisted, but she’d picked him, and she hadn’t been wrong.

But that wasn’t quite right. That made him sound like some chosen hero who’d heaved himself off his bed through sheer force of will and fought his way out against all odds with Vanessa in tow. The bits and pieces he could recall came to him in brightly illuminated but disconnected flashes, but they were enough to tell him there hadn’t been much in the way of will or choice involved in any of it. Brock still didn’t know what combination of drugs Vanessa had initially given him, but later she’d unapologetically admitted that it hadn’t been about miracle cures, but only about masking pain and overriding systems meant to deter him from doing more damage to himself. The hotshots in charge had already pumped him full of chemicals to minimize the risk of infection and speed healing, and he hadn’t been struggling with any injuries that made certain movements physically impossible. Theoretically, there hadn’t been anything he literally couldn’t do. He’d have just been tearing himself apart while he did them.

_Hey, no matter what, you were going to be someone’s science fair project_, Vanessa had told him, her tone brusque and dispassionate when he’d expressed some of the outrage he felt. _Why not mine? I gave you a personal stake in it, at least, and a chance for as much f__reedom__ as you can hang onto. Would you be happier belonging to HYDRA?_

He’d felt impatience blended with tired frustration, and underlying all of it, a disconcertingly impersonal compassion. Less real than any of those feelings, he’d felt a kind of small dog resentment in what he now recognized as an emotional feedback loop – his own emotions as felt through another empath. Somewhere down the line, Vanessa had been obliged to taste her own medicine in a characteristically paranoid and sadistic HYDRA-style warning and punishment. It had to have happened after they’d seen her in La Plata, and it explained why she’d looked like utter shit in Fredericksburg, but now she seemed to be managing better than he was. That he should know himself through her had been almost insupportable, though; it had been an ugly, teetering moment during which his body’s weakness had been the only thing saving Vanessa from violence, not because she was saying anything with which he could reasonably argue, but because she was an Other invading him, and making him other to himself. Brock hadn’t had to tell her to leave, at least, though he’d felt exhausted and weirdly skinless as she’d put distance between them.

By the time he’d awakened in Fredericksburg , it had been a while since Vanessa had been at the forefront of anything. She’d been sidelined, for the most part – pushed into the background and put on final notice for excessive caution that had begun to look more and more like intentional slow balling to her division’s overseers. She hadn’t been in a position to make any of the choices that had moved him from a hospital burn ward to that small, underground room with an IV in his arm and fire under his skin, and the people who had made those choices hadn’t done so because he’d passed any tests or proven himself particularly suitable for their procedures. They’d picked him because he’d been relatively easy to grab from the hospital to which he’d been admitted after rescue workers had dragged him out of the Triskelion’s rubble, and they’d felt they wouldn’t be out anything if they accidentally killed him.

From that point, things got hazy, and even Vanessa hadn’t been able to do much more than grimace and hand wave about it. To whom had Fredericksburg been reporting? Brock’s guess was that they hadn’t been reporting to anyone. Maybe they’d thought that building the better soldier would get them noticed by people who would bring them back into some securely funded, high tech fold. They couldn’t possibly have imagined that a handful of geeks, some soldiers, a few people from payroll, and the fuckin’ janitor were going to rise up as HYDRA’s newest head on the eastern seaboard on the strength of one superish soldier. Then again, strange things happened in the minds of people accustomed to intrigue when those people are cooped up together under extreme circumstances. They’d sure as hell thought they were accomplishing something, or they wouldn’t have locked down, but Brock couldn’t begin to imagine what that something might have been.

And, none of Brock’s memories told him exactly how it had all rolled out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. His team, near as he could tell, had been a few guys from STRIKE Zeta and a bunch of pencil necks and eggheads, at least one of whom had been running him like a kid playing a first-person shooter. _Call of Duty: Get Me the Fuck Outta Here_, Brock thought wryly. _Yet another take on an apparently undying classic._ The thought wasn’t funny; it made him feel angry and obscurely ashamed. The only saving grace in any of it was that Vanessa hadn’t tried giving him any bullshit about the greater good. No, she’d been upfront on that score; it had all been about escape and survival, with an exchange established between them that he hadn’t understood, but that, all things considered, had been fair. They were both free, weren’t they?

And in the end, he couldn’t hate her the way Jack hated her – with the stymied rage of betrayal just barely held in check by an unpayable debt of gratitude. Jack owed her his freedom and Brock’s life, and sometimes Brock thought that Jack hated her for those gifts most of all. To Jack, Vanessa had become the cold, emotionless doctor who could easily use men she’d treated as friends and lovers into expendable test subjects – who had probably never seen them as quite human. And, it wasn’t that, in and of itself, that he found unpardonable, but that she’d felt the need to make them believe she was different from the others with their needles, test tubes, beakers, tests, and graphed results. For that, he wanted to kill her and take his time doing it; for Brock’s life and health, he stayed his hand.

Brock hadn’t tried to talk Vanessa into staying with them. He didn’t have the emotional energy for unnecessary inner or outer conflict, and Jack’s hatred wasn’t going to soften anytime soon. Still, he missed Vanessa, whom he’d never previously thought of as anything but a convenience, aggravation, or mystery. With her, he felt most like himself. Even the brittle tension that was almost a constant whenever he was near her had a familiar, waiting-for-extraction feel that made him restless but not anxious. They had a lot in common, he’d decided, and that made her an odd comfort. It was nice to be with another person without having to analyze everything he felt.

“What’s next for you?” he’d asked, seated across from her at a gray and dilapidated picnic table a few day’s before she’d gone.

"Makeup,” she’d said, looking him dead in the eye. “I’ve got something lined up with a cosmetics company.”

He hadn’t pressed. And, after all, it was as likely as anything else. Brock could not picture her atoning for her sins in some third world country, administering vaccines to dirty, malnourished children while tending the sick and injured. He could, however, imagine her in some country without extradition to the US, working nine to five to minimize the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Hell, if she could just separate out whatever minor regenerative properties her serum contained, he supposed she’d have all the money she’d ever need to settle down somewhere sunny for the rest of her life. Maybe even with a little multi functional hired muscle, if that continued to take her fancy.

They’d parted ways at a service station. Brock, disguised by his impossibly unmarred face, had manned the gas pump while she’d strolled into the store without a fuss, tote slung over her shoulder. She’d had her hair up in a pony tail, and she’d been wearing a dark blue, boat neck blouse over faded jeans and clean, white sneakers. Brock thought she’d looked good, all things considered – like a well assembled, older woman on a trip with her family, not road trash or trouble, and certainly not like a dangerous fugitive. By the time she’d finished paying for the gas, a blue over gray sedan had pulled up by the air compressor, and Vanessa hopped into it without sparing Brock so much as a parting glance. Brock hoped she’d be okay; he doubted he’d ever see her again.

“She was using us,” Jack said later, lying beside Brock in the RV’s cool darkness. They’d done something more like lovemaking than fucking on the queen sized mattress tucked into its bed compartment, and Brock hadn’t fussed too much afterward about being pushed and prodded through a shower and sheet change. Stretched out beside Jack afterward, he felt warm, content, and easier in his mind than he’d been in a long while. On a certain level, he knew he felt that way because there wasn’t any contradictory pull on his emotions, but it wasn’t knowledge he cared to examine too closely.

“Well, yeah, I guess you could look at it that way,’” Brock prevaricated. “But look at me, Jack. I’m sure as hell not hurting.”

“She wanted every single one of us to get a dose,” Jack said. “We’re not talking about having Murphy override enemy security protocols, or an EMP blast, or anything like that. It was us she wanted to override. Render inoperable.”

“Yeah, but it really wasn’t personal,” Brock replied. “She didn’t want to hurt us.” He shrugged into Jack, bumping shoulders in the dark. “Not her big guys.”

“Fuck,” Jack said disgustedly. “It should’ve been personal.”

“Naw, really,” Brock said. He sighed, feeling second hand anger, hurt, and shame wash over him. He hated those feelings – the sense of helplessness they induced in him, and the urge to get them outside of himself that almost overrode thought. The prospect of a life spent placating Jack and ameliorating this or that piece of disappointing or upsetting information for Jack suddenly rose before him, and he forced it away from him. “She wanted a way to put us out of commission, at least temporarily, that wouldn’t hurt or kill a single damned one of us.”

“How do you think that would’ve worked out?” Jack asked. He sounded honestly curious, but that semi shamed anger continued simmering. “You think no one would’ve gotten hurt?”

“I think we’ve all been telling ourselves whatever we’ve had to tell ourselves to keep doing what we’ve had to do,” he said, thinking about blue tinged darkness in other bedrooms, and of Vanessa and Jack each at different times trying to tell him things he hadn’t been equipped to understand. “Maybe she did us a favor. You and me. Even if that wasn’t part of her intentions.”

Jack said nothing for a long time, but Brock felt himself settling into wary contentment, like a small animal that’s recently scavenged a good meal and is ready to trust the safety of a new, apparently sturdy and well hidden shelter, at least on a trial basis. “You think?” Jack finally asked.

“‘To build a better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down,’” Brock said. He looked at Jack in the dark and saw Jack’s face turned toward him. “I think she’s glad she didn’t have to do it,” he lied, smooth and earnest. He did not, in fact, think Vanessa would have felt any inner turmoil over pulling the trigger on them, but that was a truth he didn’t think Jack was at all prepared to hear. “I think she was relieved that it all got away from her.”

“Hmm,” Jack said. “I never really got the sense that she gave a shit about the big picture. I never figured her for a traitor, but I always knew she was in it for herself.”

“Yeah,” Brock took a deep breath. “I don’t know if it makes a whole helluva lot of sense trying to figure out who’s a traitor to what at this point, but now it’s over, and we’re still alive. We’ll figure it out.”

“The new world ain’t looking much like I imagined it would.” Jack said, and Brock chuckled.

“No, no it is not,” he agreed. “But we’ll get building soon enough.”


End file.
